Book Notes

ROOK NOTES The Reconstruction: A Documentary History of the South After the War, 1865-1877. Edited by James P. Shenton. (New York: G. P. Putnam 's Sons, 1963. Pp. 314. $5.95.) This magnificent collection of readings succeeds in dealing with Southern Reconstruction through the emotions and experiences of participants and witnesses—Northern carpetbaggers, officers, and visitors; Southern whites; and Negroes. The sources are court testimony, reminiscences (including valuable accounts of local activities extracted from Southern historical society publications), travelers' reports, letters, and the like. Professor Shenton by and large stands back and allows the contemporary clash of attitudes to speak for itself, but his own finely wrought interpretive essays (especially that on pages 71-76) reveal his concern with presenting the era as a human phenomenon—albeit ultimately a tragedy—rather than as something conventionally to be damned or rationalized. Henrico Home Front, 1861-1865: A Picture of Life in Henrico County, Virginia, from May, 1861, through April, 1865. By James H. Bailey. (Richmond: Henrico County Civil War Centennial Committee, 1963. Pp. xxiv, 275. ) The unusual base of this volume makes it a contemporary chronicle of both high interest and value. Dr. Bailey, a member of the history staff at the Medical College of Virginia, spent six months wading through the mass of records of the Henrico County Court. Items of limited appeal such as wills, deeds of conveyance, and criminal proceedings were omitted in favor of material treating more significantly of county affairs in wartime. Names parade through the pages in endless fashion, and subject matter is varied to an incomprehensible degree. Seventeen illustrations enhance this reservoir of primary material. Fortunately, there is a full index of names; but segregating whites and Negroes into separate sections leaves a bad taste and borders on the ridiculous. The Abolitionists: A Collection of Their Writings. Edited by Louis Ruchames. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1963. Pp. 259. $5.00.) Mr. Ruchames, earlier author of A John Brown Reader, presents this wideranging compilation of antislavery and antidiscrimination utterances with 445 446civil war history the belief that there were "few periods in American history that offer[ed] as remarkable an opportunity for the molding of American character to the highest standards of humanity as that in which the men and women known as Abolitionists lived and wrought." The selections, dating principally from the 1830's and early 1840's, include editorials, speeches, public letters, and other published writings, mostly by such important figures as William Lloyd Garrison, Lewis Tappan, Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Weld, and others. The introduction is a useful summary of the Garrisonian triumph within the abolition movement. The rhetoric itself, relieved only by brief prefatory remarks for each piece, might have benefited from a topical organization . Shvery as a Cause of the Civil War. Edited by Edwin C. Rozwenc. (Revised Edition. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1963. Pp. vi, 120. $1.50.) This popular volume in Heath's "Problems in American Civilization" series has been substantially revised. The original edition (1949) reflected the relative decline of slavery as a precipitator of the conflict. Fourteen years later a change in thinking has occurred. Only Charles Beard is still on hand with an outright negation, although Charles W. Ramsdell now argues against slavery as a "real" issue. Gone are the entries by Rhodes, U. B. Phillips, Foner, Osterweis, Randall, and DeVoto; instead, ten extracts from the writings of contemporaries demonstrate the antebellum pervasiveness of the slavery controversy. Rüssel Nye's essay on aroused Northern opinion remains. New arguments validating slavery as an explosive issue are offered by Kenneth Stampp, Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer, and Stanley Elkins. The main question remains much the same: Does the view that the Civil War arose out of a random collection of situations and incidents simply evade slavery's commanding importance? Military Record of Louisiana, Including Biographical and Historical Papers Relating to the Military Organizations of the State. By Napier Bartlett. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964. Pp. xv, 259. $7.50.) Georgia-bom Napier Bartlett was residing in New Orleans and serving variously as a teacher, lawyer, and journalist when the Civil War began. He enlisted in...